


The Last Questions we ask Ourselves

by minjazmin



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Allegory, And Will is recollecting, Animal Death, Bugs & Insects, Character Study, Death is presented as a surreal dream, HannibalFlashFic005, I don't really know what this is, M/M, Not brutal and only symbolic, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Surreal, Will fights his way back from death, perhaps?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:20:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29288208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minjazmin/pseuds/minjazmin
Summary: Will wanders a barren land, nothing is real, not even he.The world before him turns as he tries to understand who he is.All he wishes is to find his heart.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 3
Collections: Hannibal Flashfic #005





	The Last Questions we ask Ourselves

Was this what it was to die? 

A slow end to a fast life, trapsing through the dust and the mud. Tired feet cracked and torn against the unending harshness of these hallowed grounds. 

Voices came and went, never quite close enough to listen. Light and dark came in waves; his irises shrinking and widening to cope with the tumultuous sky above. The place which he walks was real, once. A beautiful pine forest reduced to nothing more than scorched earth and weary stumps. Everything here was dead. Maybe he was too; either way it did not matter. 

His journey continues forth, the horizon his destination, but it seems to refuse to draw any nearer despite his aching steps. The further he walks, the further it seems. Dry, brambled roots dig into the bottoms of his feet, maiming the flesh over and over until there is nothing left to destroy. The pain should be screaming, worsening by the second as dirt and unnameable insects writhe against the open wounds. But all that he could feel was indifference. Each step taken is a step on an endless journey and he would be ground to dust before he stopped. 

A noise in the breeze takes his attention, it is impossible to tell from where it comes. In each moment he thinks he has found its source, the wind changes, confusing again. The wail of a thousand creatures, pained and tormented in their final moments, grows and grows until it is all encompassing. His head turns every direction to find it, but there is no distressed animal to be seen. 

There is nothing at all close by; how can the sound be growing still? 

The ground rumbles, upending the tree stumps and throwing them aside like they are nothing. They are nothing. Below him something is changing. Flying to the floor, he presses his ear against the dry earth. He can hear it now, the creature; its wailing and writhing beneath the surface becoming ever more persistent as he listens out. 

Then it quiets. 

Quiet, but not completely silent. 

Something presses itself against him from beneath the earth where he lays, conjoining in tandem with his movements. Its limbs sprawl out just as his are. It listens too. He holds his breath; scared of provoking something, scared to make the world spin again. An almighty roar has him jumping and running. 

It is no longer a scream of pain but of wrath. It is coming for him. 

The ground splits behind him as he dodges the discarded stumps; his bloodied footprints rip apart as from the earth antler horns begin to emerge. Distended, broken, wrong. The antlers sprout, spurred on by his erratic movements – they will chase him across the barren earth until they get their way. Until they get him. 

With each stride he takes, they draw closer. It is impossible to outrun that which does not run at all. His vision is growing blotted and cloudy; ragged breathes leave him as he struggles to maintain his pace. The contorted antlers curl in the air either side of him, mocking him with their proximity. His periphery is weak and blurry, but the sharp tendrils approaching are in perfect clarity. 

Then as if it appears from nowhere, he sees a stag standing before him. Ashy grey skin covered in mottled feathers. Bile rises in his throat, but he cannot look away. As the chasing antlers make their final approach, he dives towards the beast. It lowers its head; he does nothing to stop himself. It feels destined to be speared by the mighty beast rather than its imitating pretenders. The Stag rears its head, pulls away from the man’s quivering form just in time to stop him from impaling himself. Its eyes are black; empty and endless all at once. 

It is not just a compulsion, but a need that makes him follow the beast as it turns and walks away from him. It is torturous but within him he knows he can do nothing but follow the pace which the beast ordains as correct. 

He is not sure when the trees had grown tall again, but as he looks back there is no sign of the barren land from which he had come. There is something about the trees. Something about the colour, or the texture, or the noises they make. They are human in some way. No – No, the trees are wood and sticks and browning leaves. They are nothing more. He reminds himself over and over, they are nothing more. His eyes dare not to stray from the Stag’s feathered back. There are only leaves and bark, and the fear which is beginning to cripple his stomach. 

Whispers leech at his skin. But they don’t come from the trees. Feverish whispers, words he does not understand, riddles he does not wish to solve, an ancient story that must be left undeciphered. His breath is catching in his throat; the air thick and warm and uncomfortable. It clings to him with an insatiable hunger and he lets it because while its touch is wrong, he feels desperate for anything. He lets it cling and nestle; find its home upon fevered skin as he continues onwards. It is as much an alien here as he is. 

Eyes and ears from every perceivable direction stare and listen. The whispers are no longer whispers but shouts; wild screeches that call for home, for knowledge, for anything. Nothing comes to answer the calls. His calls; he realises the voices spoke from within him. 

When he finally braces himself to look, he sees. He sees what the trees see, hears exactly what they hear. A million eyes and a million ears surround him; every tree made of severed parts. The trees have no means by which to speak; they are allowed no voice, and so, he realises, he was using his voice for them. 

The way they stare; unfiltered judgement. He knows he is getting it wrong. The words out of his mouth are unfamiliar and imprecise. Not the stories they wish to tell. He is trying so hard, but he knows it is in vain. He knows he will never be able to replace the wrong words which he utters. It would be better to stop, it would be better to give up. But he cannot bear to leave them mute. 

His screeching only ceases when a crackling light bursts ahead of him; the tree has found its voice and it can only scream and wail as it is consumed by flames. All along there was no answer which the trees could have given him. 

A gentle breeze wafts the heat towards him; it smells of meat and smoke and blood. For the first time, he falls out of step with the Stag, moving to stand next to it. Their heads turn in unison to each other; and then their steps become one. Five long strides are all it takes before the two beings are consumed in flame. Writhing motions take over all composure the Stag had once had. He watches its hind legs buckle and it falls gracelessly. The fire burns brighter and brighter until it is no longer red and gold; until nothing can be seen. A blinding white overtakes his vision. Where the Stag had once sat, only an empty void remains. The dirt beneath his feet is gone and replaced with a blinding white void which has taken all else away. No more eyes or severed ears to hear or see the ragged lies which spill from him. 

As he wanders forward, or what he believes is forward, nothing changes. His eyes transfix to the ground, searching, praying for any sign that he is making progress. 

He stumbles upon something; thin separated fragments of a once-complete landscape. Like the flesh of the earth has been torn apart and displayed in a frozen tableau of lost moments. The sun shining, rain beginning to fall, darkening shadows all captured in these queer slices of life, but none of it can reach him here in the abysmal white. And as much as he tries, he cannot reach them. 

The sun shone in one particular slide; the final smile before the rain overcame it. He wishes for anything to happen; for the sun to burn his skin, for the rain to drown him, for the shadows to overcome him. Anything but the nothingness of this white place. But as his hands attempt to grab, they fall past the tableau and straight through to the other side. This scene is not made for him to enjoy. Only to endure. 

When he looks down to his paling hands, almost as white as the surroundings, he wonders if the twitching fingers are there at all or if he had come so accustomed to expecting them that they have made their way into mind’s eye even in this foreign place. He reaches out again to the sun, to the rain, to the blackness shielded away from him and still he cannot reach it. These scenes that play before him now; he will never experience again. 

They flicker; blurry, grey, then nothing. The white all around is luminescent in their sudden absence. He continues walking to the nowhere he is destined to go. There is a shrill call from above. His head cranes to see a white sky filled with a thousand birds, each completely undeterred by him or the other birds in flight. A hawk lands before him; its beady eyes boring into him. If it wishes to strike, it holds back the compulsion. Its head cranes to the side – sizing him up. He finds himself tempted to grab it, or kick, or take some kind of action to spur on the bird. It reads his mind and takes action before he can; its talons gouge into the soft flesh of his cheek and it is gone. The warmth of the blood on his cheek, and its bitter taste as it drips into his mouth, feel like home. 

In the white – a thickening fog now – silhouettes come into focus. Horses, dogs, birds, mice. No animal is spared from its becoming in his vision, but they never quite make themselves real. Only pale shadowed imitations, much like he is. They grow from birth to death right before him; a whole lifecycle concluded in minutes. Watching the dogs’ limps grow, the horses grow wild and untameable, the mouse flitter over and rot; as quickly as they fall, a new infantile version comes to take its place. 

Over and over and over. 

They change – they embrace change. He too wishes that he could simply start anew. Perhaps he can, perhaps only he holds himself back. He must make the choice; he cannot. A piercing ring grows louder and louder until Will realises his feet are running in step with the ever-morphing creatures. He wants nothing more than to be one with them, but he is not. He never will be. 

Then he finds it again. The Stag. 

He quickly goes to approach. But when the stag looks at him, he knows: this is not the Stag. A pretender. An ominous shadow sent to tempt him to the dark. 

It bolts faster than anything in this place has moved, closer and closer until he sees its eyes are not black; but brown, red, crimson tears. It charges; its charred antlers facing straight towards him. He does not run, does not even blink as it comes towards him. 

Fear is overtaken by hatred. 

His hands grab out at the antlers; the rough texture scraping at his flesh. Human eyes look at him; the antlers are nothing more than branches now. As he snaps them, the creature shrieks and whines. There is no mercy to be had here; he lets it cry and holler, its infernal noises scaring off the last of the other living beings which had come to this place. The twisting and the snagging of the branches between his bloodied fingers seems so right. 

And then there is silence; bloody silence. Below him, crushed and ruined, the hunk of meat begins to tar the plain surface with its pooling blood. Even once the shrill sound has ceased, he continues on; bending and breaking until the gnarled outcome satisfies him. 

He turns one of the twisted points of his mangled creation towards the soft underbelly and pierces it easily. As more blood begins to flow, he forced it further, past flesh and bone until he finds the middle. Retracting the weapon, he takes his hands to the wound and tear it apart further. Amidst the blood and the flesh, he finds what he is looking for; the heart. 

It takes no effort to tear it out. It pulses in his hand dully for a moment; the last of the blood leaving its veins. As it stills between his palms, suddenly responsibility and guilt overcome him. Looking back to the stag, he sees all that has been taken from it. It seems just an empty shell, some ephemeral being that perhaps never was at all. 

He had only taken the heart; who else has been here? 

But he, he is real; and his hands pull the beating mass closer to his face, it his lips, he sees what is hidden behind his arms. A space. A space where the heart should be. The stag’s heart is not his own, but it will suffice. His teeth pierce the flesh with a renewed vigor, biting and chewing. The ventricles are tough and chewy; pieces are caught between his teeth. He consumes until there is nothing left. 

That fake beast that sits before him renews its bleeding; it pours and pours a waterfall of impossible proportions. He swallows down the last of the wretched meat. And then, as if in solidarity, his own deprived cavity begins to pour too. The blood comes together as one; immediately lost against each other’s identical shades. Spilling and spilling endless, it begins to fill the white space to which he has become so familiar. The crimson takes and takes the endless white until it is nil. Until it is above his head and he is thrashing. 

Then it is draining again, every molecule pulling itself from him as if repelled by his very existence. It comes together before him – a behemoth pillar of foul red. The closer he looks the less he understands. 

Is he expected to know what do when all he is given is this? 

The column seems to condense, growing smaller by the second. Until he begins to wonder if it is blood at all. It is too pink, too fleshy, bares too much judgement upon him. A last pouring of the blood and from beneath folded skin blue-grey eyes peer. They know him better than he knows himself. He moves towards the lumped mass, to embrace it one final time, but as his arms outstretch it is gone. Not even a drop of the crimson sea is left. 

Only a heart remains, floating opposite where his own should sit. But this is not his heart. 

It falls to the ground, so slowly that he could stop it by simply holding out his hands. But he does not. As it hits the ground, it shatters. Tiny little fragments chime a glassy melody across the floor as the pieces spread. All he can see for a while is these little red pieces scattered against the ground; he can’t leave them. He can’t leave any of them. No sun or moon or sky can tell him the time, but he knows his effort is worth hours. Hours before he is satisfied he has found every piece. 

Finally, he brings his nose up from the ground and sees the trees have begun to grow again. Taller than he already, the curling branches reach out in endless fascination of what might await. He shoves the pieces of heart into his chest to keep them safe; they feel wrong. This is not where it is supposed to be. 

The tallest tree grows before him, seemingly taller than the sky itself. He wastes no time in his ascent. The grip and the footing are unsteady, but he has no time to stop. 

The branches grow more frivolous and insecure the further up he goes. Relief floods him as he sees the top of the tree approaching; its growth finally seems to have halted. Inside him there is a growing unease, mounting pressure and sickness. As he reaches the top, he pulls out the pieces of smashed heart. They have begun to flitter; moving incessantly. One by one, he pulls them free from their fleshy prison and throws them out to the empty air ahead. But they do not leave his sight. Before him they become. The transformation is righteous; instead of falling they fly. 

The dragonflies dance around each other, diving and falling in tremendous loops. It is beautiful and his eyes cannot bear to pull away. 

Blue and green wings glisten in the sunlight; when had the sun appeared again? 

Then like an oncoming wave, heaviness falls upon everything in the land. He sees it before he feels it; the little dragonflies begin hurtling downwards, now dead weight, and the tree branches bow with his weight. Then he is cascading too; hitting every slumped branch as he goes. Their weary arms pull out towards him, eager to scratch and gouge at guilty flesh. 

The fall is going to hurt, more than the branches and sticks that seem to pierce him further with every passing moment. How far did he climb; why is not yet meeting his fate? 

Then he does. But it is not what he had come to expect. His feet plant firmly on the ground, no branch protrudes from him, but his flesh is marred. Scars of all that had he had become; scars from long-passed years. Faded but never quite gone. 

The once-destroyed heart is healed, too. It sits right next to him where he stands; beating nervously as to not again reveal itself. Not wanting to reveal itself to him. But it is too late for that, he raises the heel of his foot over the pulsating mass and presses it down firmly. The muscle fights against the intrusion, but ultimately its resistance is not enough. All that is left when he is done is a bloodied pulp. 

He does not look back as he leaves the forest. 

The cavity in his chest seems to grow more ravenously devoid by the second. But he cannot look back, cannot worry about what he has done. That is the past. Where he has stumbled is not barren, the land is fertile but struggles to cultivate. A quiet cracking sound behind him causes him to turn his head. From behind him, he is being trailed by blooms. The exact marks of his feet now immortalized in flowering gardens. He lets his feet wander, marvelling in the growth that comes with it. Perhaps for once he has done something right. 

Some of the stems reach out to him; willing his touch. He pulls at them; the beautiful blooms of yellow and pink and purple coming even more alive with his touch. They continue to grow despite their picked state and he moves urgently to place them inside himself. The deserted cavity has grown so cold and empty; this beauty will make him whole again. There are two flowers, sunflowers, which are different from the others. He does not know what it is, but he cannot bear to rip them from their stems. 

His chest is filled to the brim, fuller than a heart’s worth. Life seems to burst and glow from his chest; Is this what it is to be whole? 

But he looks to the rest of himself, his thin hands, his bruised knees, his destroyed feet, every inch of his skin is marred, grey and dull. He is not glowing. The flowers can only hide his dark with their light for so long. 

The two sunflowers seem to follow him in step, always planted only steps away from him. He turns to meet them, their seeded faces already waiting for him and he knows. He knows the sense of wrongness that has befallen him. He knows that he does not belong in this place. 

As if only to confirm it, he looks back to the flowers in his chest. Rotting and faltering before him, the once bright petals seep from his chest like pus from a wound. Black shrivelled petals are tossing from him; a gentle shower of graceless death. As they fall to the ground, he watches life become death again. The beautiful blooms which came from his footsteps, rot and black before the morbid confetti’s touch. He came to this place and bought it to life only to be the one to destroy it again. 

He runs. Runs to avoid further contamination. Runs to give the blooms their freedom. Runs to ensure he does not destroy them as he did the heart – he needed them and in the process of his taking put them in danger’s way. He couldn’t do it any longer. 

He runs until he comes to a river. Harsh, fast-flowing water which no man would survive to cross. The ground between his toes is hardening, decaying still, even here. It is as if he has poured salt into the earth; nothing will ever grow here again. 

He pulls fistfuls of rotting petals from him, holding them up and admiring the blackened, decaying mass before him. Then he tosses it to the river, delighting in the way the petals seem to dissolve beneath the surface. A new urgency takes over him, a devout appetite that he must satisfy. This is what he needs to do. He is quick and untidy in his actions, gouging himself of the blackened blooms until his chest cavity again is completely devoid. Perhaps it is best this way. There was no heart to break if he did not have one at all. 

Something compels him to look behind; a need to see for one final time. A need to know he has made the right choice. And there they are. Above the treeline now, those bright sunflowers with their empty faces basking in the golden sun. Their place was found, and it was without him. 

As he continues along the embankment, it slowly dipped until the land is almost level with the water. It threatens to overspill; creeping at his feet. There’s fear as it pools towards him, but curiosity too. And desire, perhaps this is where he is supposed to go. He turns on his heels, to face the water. 

It washed away the dark of the petals; will it wash away his sins too? And does he want it to? 

Distended limbs, desperate hands, break the surface as they pull towards him. Fingers snap frantically and then calm as if trying to fool the surface dwellers of their motivations. Extending higher from the water than the length any arm should manage, they dance and sing to stolen songs. Goading and promising and foretelling. 

The voices in this place have lied before, they will again. He is certain of this much. 

He lets the hands grab at him, realises that the water has reached above his ankles. Despite all the force which the arms claim to have, nothing can move him unless he wants to be moved. A hand grabs his own from behind, and he turns to meet it. He looks at himself. It looks nothing like him, the eyes are darker, the hair is lighter, the skin more tanned and taught against high cheekbones. But he knows it is him for the carved hollow in his chest is identical. Identical all but for one feature: this version of himself is not without his heart. 

The face is cold, unblinking and unmoving; it only waits for his commands. 

He nods his head; it is time to go. 

The other version passes him; walking until the water has him almost fully submerged. A large waiting hand extends, appeals more than any of the other reaching hands could ever hope to. He follows into the murky depths and takes the hand that promises not to wash him of who he was, but to remind him of who he is. To help him find his heart. 

The large hand in his own feels right. There is no struggle between them as he is pulled deep below. 

The two are gone. 

*** 

It is something akin to retching, the hacking cough that pours out from him. An involuntary struggle as his lungs fight to free themselves of water. He cannot help but wonder if his ribs are broken, each ragged splutter that comes from him sending another jolt of pain through his entire body. Water and blood pour from him and stain the sand which he is being dragged across. 

The same strong hand is pulling at him, away from the waves, away from the uncertainty and the pain. When finally, the man ceases his hauling, Will clambers up and kneels unsteadily. Finally bringing their gazes together, Will looks into eyes that should be warm and alive with danger, and sees only the chill of the ocean and the impending darkness. His hands cling more rapidly to cold flesh, digging in and pulling them closer together until they are both knelt face-to-face. Will touches all he can, searching for a comfort that does not quite come. 

“Is this real?” The words stick uncomfortably in his throat as Will dredges them out. 

“Real is only what we make it,” It is his voice, exactly as Will remembers it. Too exact, no pain, no breathlessness. A recording. 

“Tell me you are real,” Will is imploring now; ragged with need. 

“There should be no more lies between us, Will.” 

The sand beneath Will is bloodying to a putrid muddied black – nothing pure like that which they had witnessed upon the clifftop. Will stays staring at his pale, twitching fingers for a while, knowing what would come if he were to move, to look up and accept. 

Finally, he forces himself to look, to see; his neck cranes painfully upwards. No arm extends out to him. No one had pulled him from the water, but the crashing waves and unlucky circumstance. On this desolate little stretch of beach, Will feels his heart rip out once again – this time there was nothing which would replace it. It had drifted out, lost in the icy waves and Will knew it might never return. 

He had thrown his heart into the unknown depths. Why should he have expected it to wash up so easily?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure what this is, but it is what came of the prompt. I hope you enjoyed it regardless!  
> The whole piece is supposed to be a mess of allegory reflecting on Will's life, and I hope that came across :)


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